Fluid Simulation for Video Games, part 3

Third in a series (of 7) became available this week:

http://software.intel.com/en-us/articles/fluid-simulation-for-video-games-part-3/

Fluid Simulation for Video Games, part 2: Fluid Simulation Techniques

The second in a series of articles I wrote for Intel:

http://software.intel.com/en-us/articles/fluid-simulation-for-video-games-part-2/

...and related videos:

Atomic vortex ring
Cannonball through smoke
Dragons, bunnies and magic

Make sure to watch them in HD!

The third article will include the source code for a complete real-time fluid simulation with two-way fluid-body interaction.

Future articles will refine and speed up that simulation.

Fluid Simulation for Video Games, part 1: Introduction to Fluid Dynamics

The first in a series of articles I wrote for Intel:

http://software.intel.com/en-us/articles/fluid-simulation-for-video-games-part-1/

...and some delicious videos:

Atomic vortex ring
Cannonball through smoke
Dragons, bunnies and magic

Make sure to watch them in HD!

Airfoil with lift

Fluid flow past an airfoil.

Any ideas for how to use this in a game?

Maybe a puzzle game where you have to get a paper airplane to strike a target...?

Vortex splitting

Vortices which separated now spawn new particles, maintaining a contiguous thread of them.
Have a look.

See you at SIGgraph.

Fluid simulation update: SIGgraph 2008 poster

SIGgraph 2008 accepted my poster and I've prepared source material for it. Jon Tran and Todd Deery are working on the actual poster and Jon's first few passes at it look great. I'll provide a link to the PDF when it's ready for public consumption.

Meanwhile here are some new movies.

Campfire with smoke

I added another test case for my fluid simulation.

Thanks to Max Acree for the campfire model.

Tree-based far-field interactions

I added tree-based far-field interactions.

I provided two movies: pretty and nifty.

This diagram tries to explain how the influence algorithm works. Obviously I need to throw more words at that, which of course I will do in the near future. Stay tuned!

Merging, lighting and sorting

I added lighting to the fluid simulation.

Behold.

This version also includes vortex merging and depth sorting so I can crank up the opacity, which makes the smoke look thicker, lets you get away with fewer particles and lets you see the detail more clearly.

Smoke and Mirrors

I found these results mesmerizing and I wondered about the etymology of that word so naturally I looked it up. The word comes from an 18th century French physician named Mesmer who concocted the notion of "animal magnetism" which (he conjectured) involved the flow of a mysterious magnetic fluid that supposedly flows through all beings.

Perhaps I'll name my fluid-like simulation "mesmeric fluid" because both his fluid and mine are fictional but captivating.

Some earlier results:

• body and flow mutually interacting
• wake behind a body
• multiple fluids interacting